Had to kill some time to make it plausible that he went to Freddy Button's building and dropped off a note and came back. He walked over to Madison Avenue ... the Whitney Museum ... the Carlyle Hotel . . . Three men came out of the door that led to the Cafe Carlyle. They were about his age. They were talking and laughing, with their heads thrown back, blissfully boiled ... All three carried attache cases, and two of them wore dark suits, white shirts, and pale yellow ties with small print patterns. These pale yellow ties had become the insignia of the worker bees of the business world . . . What the hell did they have to laugh and crow about, other than the alcoholic buzz in their brains, the poor deluded—

He was experiencing the resentment of those who discover that, despite their own grave condition, the world goes on about its business, heartless, without even so much as a long face.